[ad_1]
If anyone wanted evidence that the market feels skittish just look at stocks related to electric vehicles. They are getting hammered on capital raising activity that, frankly, should surprise no one.
Source link
- Order Reprints
- Print Article
Tag: Shipping
-
Ukrainian attacks force Russia to relocate Black Sea fleet
[ad_1]
Press play to listen to this article
Voiced by artificial intelligence.
KYIV — Ukraine has hammered Russia’s Black Sea fleet so hard that Moscow is shifting much of it away from Crimea, allowing Kyiv to reopen its ports to grain vessels despite Russia’s blockade threats.
“As of today, Russia is dispersing its fleet, fearing more attacks on its ships. Some units are relocating to the port of Novorossiysk. They try not to visit Sevastopol so often because they don’t feel safe there anymore,” Ukrainian navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk told POLITICO.
Ukraine unleashed a series of carefully planned attacks against the fleet and parts of its crucial infrastructure in recent weeks — destroying key air defense systems, landing commandos on Crimea, and pounding the fleet’s base in Sevastopol in an attack that heavily damaged a submarine and a missile carrier and put the fleet’s dry dock out of commission.
The coup de grâce was a missile attack on the fleet’s headquarters in downtown Sevastopol.
Ukrainian forces also control drilling rigs in the Black Sea as well as Zmiiniy Island — the famous island where Ukrainian forces said: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” in the early days of the war.
That’s made naval operations in the western part of the Black Sea perilous for Russia, allowing grain ships to dock at Ukrainian ports with much less fear of being stopped and boarded by the Russians.
“Now ships and boats of the Black Sea fleet of the Russian Federation do not actually sail in the direction of the territorial sea of Ukraine. From time to time, they appear on the coast of Crimea, but not closer. They do not dare to go beyond the Tarkhankut Peninsula,” Natalia Humeniuk of Ukraine’s Army Operational Command South, told Ukrainian television on Wednesday, referring to the point that marks the westernmost extremity of Crimea into the Black Sea.
Mayday mayday
She said Russian warships had been pushed back at least 100 nautical miles from the coast controlled by Ukraine.
That’s allowed Kyiv to restart grain exports from three Black Sea ports — reopening a route that the Kremlin had tried to throttle after pulling out of the U.N.-negotiated grain deal in July.
An official with the Ukrainian Armed Forces Command South, who was granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the Ukrainian military counted at least 10 Russian Black Sea fleet vessels that used to be based in Crimea and have now shifted east to the Russian port of Novorossiysk.
“They stopped being there all the time,” Pletenchuk said.
While cargo ships are again sailing to Ukrainian ports, Humeniuk warned that the threat isn’t over.
The Black Sea fleet has been a bone contention between Ukraine and Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union | AFP via Getty Images Although Russian warships have made themselves scarce, Russian planes are still flying over the sea. Russian forces frequently bomb Zmiiniy Island and attack cities and towns on the Black Sea coast of Ukraine with drones.
There is also the danger that Russia may lay mines to block sea routes, British intelligence said on Wednesday.
But for the moment, the situation on the Black Sea is a huge embarrassment for the Kremlin, as its second-largest naval force has been humbled by a country with almost no navy.
The Black Sea fleet has been a bone contention between Ukraine and Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moscow had a special arrangement with Kyiv to keep basing the fleet in Sevastopol, and concern over those basing rights was one of the reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin gave for his illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The challenge to the fleet also endangers Russia’s hold on Crimea, said Volodymyr Zablotskiy, a Ukrainian military and naval expert.
“Without Crimea, this expansion fleet will not be viable, and the capabilities of the Kremlin and the region will be limited. These are the strategic consequences of our future de-occupation of the peninsula,” he said. “It is the fleet that enables the logistics of the Russian forces in this direction. And the key to it is the possession of Sevastopol.”
[ad_2]
Veronika Melkozerova
Source link -
West’s oil price cap fails to empty Russian war chest
[ad_1]
Press play to listen to this article
Voiced by artificial intelligence.
Western efforts to undermine the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine through a price cap on Russia’s all-important oil income are falling short. Hopes that Moscow could run out of cash for weapons and soldiers’ salaries are fading, industry insiders warn, as Russia sells its oil exports well above a $60-per-barrel price cap imposed by the G7+ nations, boosted by strong Chinese and Indian demand.
Russia’s main crude blend, Urals, broke through the cap imposed by G7+ countries on the open market in June, and has since pushed above $80 per barrel last month. It is currently trading at around $75 a barrel.
That means Russian President Vladimir Putin can keep the war going for longer: Strong oil revenues allow Moscow to purchase more arms and bolster the civilian economy. Isolating Russia from global markets has been a key pillar of the U.S. and EU strategy to counter the invasion, along with supplying weapons to Ukraine. Russian spending plans reveal that it will allocate a third of its annual budget to defense next year, indicating its top brass are confident they can outlast and outspend the West.
Besides higher prices, Russia is also selling more crude by volume, with seaborne exports rising 10 percent last month to 3.37 million barrels a day — well above the pre-war average of 3.1 million, according to data from commodities giant S&P.
“The price cap has absolutely failed,” Fotios Katsoulas, lead analyst for tanker shipping at S&P, told POLITICO from London. “Across the market we expect that all of the cargoes of Russian barrels are now trading above the price cap.”
The high prices are driven by a strong global market, he said, with benchmark Brent crude flirting with $100 a barrel in recent weeks. With benchmarks so high, Russian crude offers a tempting discount even at $80 or more.
Russia has been working to actively subvert the sanctions, taking advantage of a “shadow fleet” of aging tankers willing to carry oil in violation of the sanctions — often obscuring their ownership and even hiding the true origin of their cargo.
“New companies have been established in the [United Arab] Emirates, India, China and so on, increasing the tonnage they control, buying older vessels, not operating under Western insurance providers,” said Katsoulas, arguing the move means they’re effectively immune to the consequences of violating the price cap. China and India are now the largest destinations for Russian seaborne crude, followed by Turkey.
A senior economist at one major trading firm, granted anonymity to speak frankly on sensitive regulatory issues, warned there is little Western policymakers can do to enforce the rules without overheating an already frothy market.
“The U.S. administration probably will prefer to not penalize freight and insurance companies involved in breaking the $60 limit because that would risk even higher crude oil prices,” the trader said.
You can leave your cap on
A spokesperson for the European Commission acknowledged that there had been “recent fluctuations in oil prices above the G7+ price cap level,” but insisted “this does not mean that the price cap is not working.”
“To continue the successful enforcement of the oil price caps across the international coalition, it is indeed vital to counter Russian attempts to undermine its functioning,” the official added, pointing out that the bloc has sought to target rogue ship operators in its 11th package of sanctions against Moscow in May.
Strong oil revenues allow Moscow to purchase more arms and bolster the civilian economy | Matthew Stockman/Getty Images Maria Shagina, a sanctions researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, cautioned against giving up on the price cap. Instead, “we now need to make sure the cap is watertight, that the mechanism is more robust than it is now.”
“Tighter enforcement would make a difference to the Russian budget — when there was more compliance from January through to August we saw Russian revenues drop 50 percent year on year and they struggled to cope with social spending and war-related spending,” Shagina said. “Now the cap is failing, but it hasn’t ultimately failed. If we tighten the screws we can bring it back to life.”
That could be difficult without the U.S. Last month, five diplomats from EU countries told POLITICO that despite growing awareness that the restrictions aren’t functioning properly, there is little appetite among the bloc’s governments to change it. “The Americans have said from their point of view that it’s working,” said one envoy, with another pointing out that little would change without U.S. support for tighter rules.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s top economic adviser, Oleg Ustenko, used an interview with POLITICO in August to urge the West to both tighten the cap to just $30, and to close a “loophole” that allows countries like India, Turkey and China to export fuel refined from Russian crude to the global market without restrictions.
Responding to a request for comment, the U.S. State Department said that “the coalition continues to watch market conditions closely” and argued that current measures have already “rendered the Russian military-industrial complex unable to produce and maintain critical equipment for operations in Ukraine.”
Victor Jack contributed reporting.
[ad_2]
Gabriel Gavin
Source link -
These 20 stocks in the S&P 500 are expected to soar after rising interest rates have pushed down valuations
[ad_1]
Two things investors can be sure about: Nothing lasts forever and the stock market always overreacts. The spiking of yields on long-term U.S. Treasury securities has been breathtaking, and it has led to remarkable declines for some sectors and possible bargains for contrarian investors who can commit for the long term.
First we will show how the sectors of the S&P 500
have performed. Then we will look at price-to-earnings valuations for the sectors and compare them to long-term averages. Then we will screen the entire index for companies trading below their long-term forward P/E valuation averages and narrow the list to companies most favored by analysts.Here are total returns, with dividends reinvested, for the 11 sectors of the S&P 500, with broad indexes below. The sectors are sorted by ascending total returns this year through Monday.
Sector or index 2023 return 2022 return Return since end of 2021 1 week return 1 month return Utilities -18.4% 1.6% -17.2% -11.1% -9.6% Real Estate -7.1% -26.1% -31.4% -3.0% -8.8% Consumer Staples -5.4% -0.6% -6.0% -2.2% -4.4% Healthcare -4.2% -2.0% -6.1% -1.7% -3.3% Financials -2.5% -10.5% -12.7% -2.5% -4.7% Materials 1.3% -12.3% -11.2% -1.9% -7.0% Industrials 3.5% -5.5% -2.1% -1.8% -7.3% Energy 4.0% 65.7% 72.4% -1.9% -1.4% Consumer Discretionary 27.0% -37.0% -20.0% -0.6% -5.2% Information Technology 36.5% -28.2% -2.0% 0.8% -5.9% Communication Services 42.5% -39.9% -14.3% 1.1% -1.3% S&P 500
13.1% -18.1% -7.4% -1.1% -4.9% DJ Industrial Average
2.5% -6.9% -4.5% -1.7% -4.0% Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP28.0% -32.5% -13.7% 0.3% -5.1% Nasdaq-100 Index
36.5% -32.4% -7.7% 0.5% -4.2% Source: FactSet Returns for 2022 are also included, along with those since the end of 2021. Last year’s weakest sector, communications services, has been this year’s strongest performer. This sector includes Alphabet Inc.
GOOGL
and Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
which have returned 52% and 155% this year, respectively, but are still down since the end of 2021. To the right are returns for the past week and month through Monday.On Monday, the S&P 500 Utilities sector had its worst one-day performance since 2020, with a 4.7% decline. Investors were reacting to the jump in long-term interest rates.
Here is a link to the U.S. Treasury Department’s summary of the daily yield curve across maturities for Treasury securities.
The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes
jumped 10 basis points in only one day to 4.69% on Monday. A month earlier the 10-year yield was only 4.27%. Also on Monday, the yield on 20-year Treasury bonds
rose to 5.00% from 4.92% on Friday. It was up from 4.56% a month earlier.Market Extra: Bond investors feel the heat as popular fixed-income ETF suffers lowest close since 2007
The Treasury yield curve is still inverted, with 3-month T-bills
yielding 5.62% on Monday, but that was up only slightly from a month earlier. An inverted yield curve has traditionally signaled that bond investors expect a recession within a year and a lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve. Demand for bonds pushes their prices down. But the reverse has happened over recent days, with the selling of longer-term Treasury securities pushing yields up rapidly.Another way to illustrate the phenomenon is to look at how the Federal Reserve has shifted the U.S. money supply. Odeon Capital analyst Dick Bove wrote in a note to clients on Friday that “the Federal Reserve has not deviated from its policy to defeat inflation by tightening monetary policy,” as it has shrunk its balance sheet (mostly Treasury securities) to $8.1 trillion from $9 trillion in March 2022. He added: “The M2 money supply was $21.8 trillion in March 2022; today it is $20.8 trillion. You cannot get tighter than these numbers indicate.”
Then on Tuesday, Bove illustrated the Fed’s tightening and the movement of the 10-year yield with two charts:
Odeon Capital Group, Bloomberg
Bove said he believes the bond market has gotten it wrong, with the inverted yield curve reflecting expectations of rate cuts next year. If he is correct, investors can expect longer-term yields to keep shooting up and a normalization of the yield curve.
This has set up a brutal environment for utility stocks, which are typically desired by investors who are seeking dividend income. In a market in which you can receive a yield of 5.5% with little risk over the short term, and in which you can lock in a long-term yield of about 5%, why take a risk in the stock market? And if you believe that the core inflation rate of 3.7% makes a 5% yield seem paltry, keep in mind that not all investors think the same way. Many worry less about the inflation rate because large components of official inflation calculations, such as home prices and car prices, don’t affect everyone every year.
We cannot know when this current selloff of longer-term bonds will end, or how much of an effect it will have on the stock market. But sharp declines in the stock market can set up attractive price points for investors looking to go in for the long haul.
Screening for lower valuations and high ratings
A combination of rising earnings estimates and price declines could shed light on potential buying opportunities, based on forward price-to-earnings ratios.
Let’s look at the sectors again, in the same order, this time to show their forward P/E ratios, based on weighted rolling 12-month consensus estimates for earnings per share among analysts polled by FactSet:
There is a limit to how many columns we can show in the table. The S&P 500’s forward P/E ratio is now 17.94, compared with 16.79 at the end of 2022 and 21.53 at the end of 2021. The benchmark index’s P/E is above its 10- and 15-year average levels but below the five-year average.
If we compare the current sector P/E numbers to 5-, 10- and 15-year averages, we can see that the current levels are below all three averages for four sectors: utilities, real estate, financials and communications services. The first three face obvious difficulties as they adjust to the rising-rate environment, while the real-estate sector reels from continuing low usage rates for office buildings, from the change in behavior brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Your own opinions, along with the pricing for some sectors, might drive some investment choices.
A broader screen of the S&P 500 might point to companies for you to research further.
We narrowed the S&P 500 as follows:
- Current forward P/E below 5-, 10- and 15-year average valuations. For stocks with negative earnings-per-share estimates for the next 12 months, there is no forward P/E ratio so they were excluded. For stocks listed for less than 15 years, we required at least a 5-year average P/E for comparison. This brought the list down to 138 companies.
- “Buy” or equivalent ratings from at least two-thirds of analysts: 41 companies.
Here are the 20 companies that passed the screen, for which analysts’ price targets imply the highest upside potential over the next 12 months.
There is too much data for one table, so first we will show the P/E information:
Company Ticker Current P/E to 5-year average Current P/E to 10-year average Current P/E to 15-year average SolarEdge Technologies Inc. SEDG 89% N/A N/A AES Corp. AES 66% 75% 90% Insulet Corp. PODD 18% N/A N/A United Airlines Holdings Inc. UAL 42% 50% N/A Alaska Air Group Inc. ALK 51% 57% N/A Tapestry Inc. TPR 39% 49% 70% Albemarle Corp. ALB 39% 50% 73% Delta Air Lines Inc. DAL 60% 63% 21% Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. ARE 59% 68% N/A Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS 96% 78% 53% Paycom Software Inc. PAYC 61% N/A N/A PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL 33% N/A N/A SBA Communications Corp. Class A SBAC 27% N/A N/A Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD 58% 39% N/A LKQ Corp. LKQ 92% 44% 78% Charles Schwab Corp. SCHW 75% 54% 73% PulteGroup Inc. PHM 94% 47% N/A Lamb Weston Holdings Inc. LW 71% N/A N/A News Corp Class A NWSA 93% 73% N/A CVS Health Corp. CVS 75% 61% 67% Source: FactSet Click on the tickers for more about each company or index.
News Corp
NWSA
is on the list. The company owns Dow Jones, which in turn owns MarketWatch.Here’s the list again, with ratings and consensus price-target information:
Company Ticker Share “buy” ratings Oct. 2 price Consensus price target Implied 12-month upside potential SolarEdge Technologies Inc. SEDG 74% $122.56 $268.77 119% AES Corp. AES 79% $14.16 $25.60 81% Insulet Corp. PODD 68% $165.04 $279.00 69% United Airlines Holdings Inc. UAL 71% $41.62 $69.52 67% Alaska Air Group Inc. ALK 87% $36.83 $61.31 66% Tapestry Inc. TPR 75% $28.58 $46.21 62% Albemarle Corp. ALB 81% $162.41 $259.95 60% Delta Air Lines Inc. DAL 95% $36.45 $58.11 59% Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. ARE 100% $98.18 $149.45 52% Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS 72% $45.70 $68.15 49% Paycom Software Inc. PAYC 77% $260.04 $384.89 48% PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL 69% $58.56 $86.38 48% SBA Communications Corp. Class A SBAC 68% $198.24 $276.69 40% Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD 74% $103.27 $143.07 39% LKQ Corp. LKQ 82% $49.13 $67.13 37% Charles Schwab Corp. SCHW 77% $53.55 $72.67 36% PulteGroup Inc. PHM 81% $73.22 $98.60 35% Lamb Weston Holdings Inc. LW 100% $92.23 $123.50 34% News Corp Class A NWSA 78% $20.00 $26.42 32% CVS Health Corp. CVS 77% $69.69 $90.88 30% Source: FactSet A year may actually be a short period for a long-term investor, but 12-month price targets are the norm for analysts working for brokerage companies.
Don’t miss: This fund shows that industry expertise can help you make a lot of money in the stock market
[ad_2]
-
Tesla, Rivian, Discover, Sphere Entertainment, Nvidia, and More Stock Market Movers
[ad_1]
[ad_2]
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/stock-market-movers-e5dab615
Source link -
Biden calls on Republicans to ‘keep their word about support for Ukraine’
[ad_1]
President Joe Biden, speaking at the White House on Sunday some 12 hours after signing stopgap legislation to avert a federal government shutdown, called on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and fellow Republicans to maintain the U.S.’s commitment to assist Ukraine in its ongoing defense against the Russian invasion that began in February 2022. McCarthy, the president said, has committed to bring a Ukraine assistance bill to the House floor, after McCarthy, who has to varying degrees publicly expressed support for the Ukraine cause, removed Ukraine funds from the 45-day continuing resolution passed Saturday, with Democratic backing, to assuage his own intraparty detractors. “Let’s be clear,” said Biden. “I hope my friends on the other side [of the aisle] keep their word about support for Ukraine. They said they’re going to support Ukraine in a separate vote.” Biden called the government-shutdown near-miss “a manufactured crisis” brought about when Republicans walked away from the compromises reached in May, when McCarthy and Biden came together to resolve a debt-ceiling impasse. “I’m sick and tired of the brinksmanship.”
[ad_2]
-
Britain seeks to train military inside Ukraine, UK defense chief says
[ad_1]
LONDON — Britain is in talks to move more training and production of military equipment into Ukraine, U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, which took place following a briefing with Chief of the General Staff Patrick Sanders on Friday, Shapps said he had been “talking today about eventually getting the training brought closer and actually into Ukraine as well.”
“Particularly in the west of the country, I think the opportunity now is to bring more things ‘in country,’ and not just training but also we’re seeing [U.K. defense firm] BAE, for example, move into manufacturing in country,” he said.
“I’m keen to see other British companies do their bit as well by doing the same thing. So I think there will be a move to get more training and production in the country,” Shapps said.
The U.K. and other NATO members have so far avoided setting up a military presence in Ukraine to reduce the risk of a direct conflict between the defense alliance and Russia.
Dmitry Medvedev, chairman of Russia’s security council, suggested that British soldiers training Ukrainian troops in Ukraine would make them legitimate targets for Russian forces. The move would “turn your instructors into legal targets for our armed forces,” Medvedev said on Telegram. “Knowing full well that they will be mercilessly destroyed. And not as mercenaries, but precisely as British NATO specialists.”
Shapps traveled to Kyiv last week where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Talking about Russian attacks on commercial vessels in the Black Sea, Shapps said: “It’s important that we don’t allow a situation to establish by default that somehow international shipping isn’t allowed in that water.”
[ad_2]
Annabelle Dickson
Source link -
Here’s how the Republican presidential candidates say they’ll whip inflation
[ad_1]
Inflation remains a top concern among Americans, so what do the Republicans seeking President Joe Biden’s job say they’ll do about it?
MarketWatch asked the 2024 GOP White House hopefuls to give at least three ways that they would address the elevated prices that have blown up many household budgets.
Most campaigns provided responses, while some didn’t but have offered proposals in other venues. See what they’re all planning below.
The economy is the No. 1 issue for Republican voters, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, which found 36% citing the economy generally and an additional 10% citing inflation.
MarketWatch contacted the eight contenders who took part in their primary’s first debate, along with former President Donald Trump, who skipped the debate, and two relatively well-known contenders who failed to qualify for the first debate, Larry Elder and former Congressman Will Hurd. They are listed below in order of their ranking in the latest polls, based on a RealClearPolitics moving average.
Inflation was low when Trump became president, with prices rising less than 2% a year. That was even considered a problem before the COVID-19 pandemic, with inflation often characterized as stubbornly or persistently low. Inflation began to spike in 2021, shortly after Biden took office, due to a global shortage of goods and a huge rebound in consumer demand following the pandemic’s early stages. Economists say massive stimulus by both the Trump and Biden administrations as well as low interest rates fostered by the Federal Reserve helped to push inflation to a 40-year high.
Biden has stressed that inflation, as measured by the consumer-price index, has “fallen by around two-thirds,” and he and his team have talked up their efforts to lower costs for prescription drugs and insulin, to crack down on junk fees for a range of services, and to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gasoline prices. Biden’s re-election campaign didn’t respond to MarketWatch’s request for comment.
Donald Trump
“I would get inflation down,” Trump said in a recent interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while saying that “we did a great job with inflation.” His campaign pointed MarketWatch to a number of policy proposals in which Trump himself is quoted.
Former President Donald Trump walks over to speak with reporters before departing from Atlanta’s airport last month.
AP
- The former president says he’ll rein in what he calls Biden’s “wasteful spending,” which Trump says is key to stopping inflation. Trump is proposing to use what’s known as impoundment authority to reduce federal spending. That term refers to the ability of a president to withhold congressionally appropriated funds from their intended use, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
- Trump also calls for boosting energy output. “When I’m back in the White House, I will immediately unleash energy production, slash regulations, like I did just three years ago, and repeal Biden’s tax hikes to get inflation down as fast as possible, and it will go quickly, so that interest rates can get back under control,” Trump says on his campaign website. “I would get inflation down, because drill we must,” he told “Meet the Press.”
- A Trump spokesman did not respond when asked for specifics about which Biden-approved tax increases Trump would repeal. The former president and his advisers, meanwhile, have reportedly discussed deeper cuts to both individual and corporate rates that would build on the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Ron DeSantis
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, says a spokesman, “will reduce inflation by, among other measures, tackling government spending, unleashing domestic energy and removing burdensome Biden administration regulations.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks in July during a press conference in West Columbia, S.C.
AP Photo/Sean Rayford
- In his economic plan, DeSantis leans heavily into energy policy for addressing inflation. “DeSantis will unleash our domestic energy sector, modernize and protect our grid and advance American energy independence. This will not only increase our economic and national security while reducing inflation, [but] it will also help fuel a manufacturing renaissance that will create jobs, revitalize our communities and improve our standard of living,” says his plan.
- He told “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell” that, as president, he would “stop spending so much money. We need a president that’s going to be a force for spending restraint, because that’s one of the root causes, with Congress spending so much.” He criticized both Democrats and Republicans for government spending.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks in April at an event in Iowa.
AP
“This isn’t complicated,” entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy said in a recent post on X. “Fight inflation, unleash growth by taking the handcuffs [off] the U.S. energy sector & dismantling the regulatory state.” His campaign didn’t respond to MarketWatch’s request for comment, but his campaign website offers the following proposals:
- “Drill, frack & burn coal : abandon the climate cult & unshackle nuclear energy.”
- “Launch deregulatory ‘Reagan 2.0’ revolution: cut > 75% headcount amongst U.S. regulators.”
-
Ramaswamy is also calling for dramatically changing the Federal Reserve, by ending the central bank’s dual mandate of keeping inflation low and maintaining full employment. “Limit the U.S. Fed’s scope: stabilize the dollar
DXY
& nothing more,” his campaign site says.
Nikki Haley
A spokesman for Nikki Haley’s campaign pointed to a Fox Business interview on Wednesday in which she called for ending the federal gas tax and cutting spending, as well as to her speech Friday in New Hampshire on her economic plan.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina governor.
Getty Images
- “We want to eliminate the federal gas tax completely,” Haley told Fox Business. “We have to get more money in our taxpayers’ pockets.” That tax helps pay for highways, but she said the system isn’t working, echoing a point that some policy analysts have previously made. Biden pushed for temporarily suspending the federal gas tax in 2022, but Congress didn’t provide sufficient support for his proposal. In her economic speech, Haley also promised to cut income taxes for working families and make permanent the tax cuts that small businesses scored in 2017’s GOP tax overhaul.
- The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said members of Congress are “spending like drunken sailors,” as she promised to reduce the federal government’s outlays. “I will veto any spending bill that doesn’t take us back to pre-COVID levels,” she told Fox Business, referring to budgets that date to before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.
- Haley in her speech Friday pledged to support the U.S. energy industry, as she suggested that Washington has been “stifling it.” She said: “We’ll drill so much oil and gas, families will save big on their utility bills.”
Mike Pence
A spokesman for Pence’s campaign pointed to the former vice president’s plan for “ending inflation,” which calls for actions such as reducing the federal government’s spending and changing the Federal Reserve’s job description.
Former Vice President Mike Pence served as governor of Indiana and as a congressman before becoming Donald Trump’s running mate in 2016.
AP
- A Pence administration would “end runaway deficits by freezing non-defense spending, eliminating unnecessary government programs, repealing over $3 trillion in new spending under Biden, and reforming mandatory programs that drive our debt,” the plan says. Earlier this year, he urged “commonsense and compassionate” reforms for programs such as Social Security and Medicaid.
- Pence wants to end the Fed’s dual mandate, which calls for the U.S. central bank to focus on full employment and stable prices. “Trying to serve two, often contradictory goals has led to wild fluctuation in rates,” his plan says, adding that it’s better to “leave employment policy to the president and Congress.”
- The former vice president’s plan said he aims to bring supply chains and production “back home,” and that would happen by “removing regulatory burdens, enacting pro-growth tax policies, and ensuring access to abundant American energy.” In other words: “We will fight inflation by making America the best place to do business again.”
-
Similar to his 2024 GOP rivals, Pence blasts Biden’s energy policies, though some of the Democratic incumbent’s stances, such as his approval of the Willow drilling project in Alaska, have also been criticized by environmental groups. Pence’s plan says: “It is time to reverse Biden’s attack on American energy by restarting oil and gas leasing on federal lands, opening the Arctic and offshore regions for exploration
XOP,
approving safe transportation of oil and gas, mining rare earth minerals, and rejecting climate change hysteria that is causing U.S. energy
XLE
production to fall.”
Chris Christie
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie addresses a New Hampshire audience in April.
AP Photo/Charles Krupa
Chris Christie’s White House campaign didn’t respond to MarketWatch’s requests for comment, but the former New Jersey governor has emphasized that reducing government spending will help tame inflation.
“The out-of-control government spending has created this inflation,” Christie said in June during a CNN town hall. “I mean, even Larry Summers, who I don’t agree with much on, former Democratic Treasury secretary, warned Joe Biden, ‘Don’t do this spending. It’s going to cause the inflation.’ So, first, we need to bring spending down, and we’ve talked about that before.”
Related: Larry Summers has a new inflation warning
Tim Scott
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott pointed to reducing the federal government’s spending and repealing one of Biden’s signature legislative packages, when asked about how he would address inflation.
Tim Scott, a U.S. senator from South Carolina, speaks last month during the presidential debate in Milwaukee.
Getty Images
- Scott, from South Carolina, said in a statement that he would aim to “snap non-defense discretionary spending back to the pre-COVID 2019 baseline.” He described that as stopping Democrats from “turning the temporary pandemic into permanent socialism.”
- Scott said he would rescind the Inflation Reduction Act, which is Democrats’ big economic package aimed at addressing climate change, capping drug costs and raising hundreds of billions of dollars through taxes on corporations. “The Inflation Reduction Act actually increased inflation and the only thing it reduced was money in our pockets,” he said in his statement. “Cutting that off and restoring tax cuts and eliminating the tax increases would go a long way to having the kind of stimulative impact in our economy and controlling spending.”
- Scott called for stronger economic growth. “We have to also grow our economy somewhere near 5% consistently,” he said, adding that could create 10 million jobs. The U.S. economy grew by nearly 6% in 2021 after contracting in 2020 as COVID hit, then it expanded by about 2% in 2022.
Related: Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott says he wants to put the focus on tax cuts
Asa Hutchinson
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson blames “excessive federal spending” for leading to inflation when giving speeches, and outlines a plan for “fiscal responsibility” on his campaign site.
Asa Hutchinson, governor of Arkansas from 2015 until this year, speaks at an Iowa event in April.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
- “Restore discipline by reducing federal government size, cutting spending, balancing the budget, and lowering the deficit to tame inflation,” it states.
- When Hutchinson was governor, he signed a $500 million tax-cut package, saying “it could not come at a better time with the continued challenge of high food and gas prices.” That was in August 2022. On his campaign website, he repeats a call to cut taxes and “reduce regulations to boost the private sector and enhance wages for American workers.”
Hutchinson’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from MarketWatch.
Doug Burgum
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a GOP presidential hopeful, speaks at the Iowa State Fair in August.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s website says that as president he would “get inflation under control, cut taxes, lower gas prices
RB00,
+0.31% ,
reduce the cost of living and help people realize their fullest potential.” It doesn’t provide specifics.A spokesman for Burgum’s White House campaign didn’t respond to MarketWatch’s requests for comment. A spokesman reportedly told the New York Times that the campaign will roll out its vision and plans on its own timeline.
Larry Elder
Larry Elder, a conservative radio host and a gubernatorial candidate in California in the failed 2021 recall of Democratic incumbent Gavin Newsom, said he views energy and tax policy and a constitutional amendment as ways to whip inflation.
Larry Elder is a conservative radio host and former gubernatorial candidate in California.
AP
-
“Reverse the war on oil
CL00,
+0.93%
and gas
NG00,
-2.65%
; permit drilling in Anwar [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge]; authorize the Keystone Pipeline; reverse the Biden restrictions on drilling on federal lands; and encourage nuclear energy
NLR,
” Elder said in a statement. - “Encourage an amendment to the Constitution to set spending to a fixed percent of the GDP,” he also said.
- Elder said the reduction in spending forced by that constitutional amendment would “coincide with a steep reduction in personal and corporate income taxes,” offering further help to Americans with stretched budgets.
Will Hurd
2024 Republican presidential hopeful Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman, speaks in Iowa in July.
AFP via Getty Images
Former U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of Texas announced his candidacy in June but so far hasn’t made it to the debate stage. In his campaign-launch video, he labeled inflation “still out of control.”
- In a post on X in June, Hurd called for reining in spending. “You cannot be putting government funds into, at a time where you’re seeing the rising inflation,” he said.
- And he said tax hikes are a nonstarter when inflation is high. “The worst time to talk about increasing taxes is when everybody’s hurting from inflation.”
- Hurd also said the deficit should be addressed, to “start bending the curve back on the debt.”
Hurd’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from MarketWatch.
Jeffry Bartash contributed.
[ad_2]
-
These 20 growth stocks are worth considering on a pullback, says Citi
[ad_1]
Citi has released a list of 20 large-cap growth stocks that it says present opportunities in the event of a pullback.
“Our call since early summer has been to hold Growth and look to buy on pullbacks,” Citi analyst Scott Chronert said in a note released Monday, adding that Citi has had a tactical preference for cyclicals. “However, on the heels of the strong Cyclicals surge during June and July, and our upwardly revised S&P 500 target of 4600, the messaging has been to buy on pullbacks more broadly,” he wrote.
Citi also notes that the Russell 1000 Growth Index
RLG
has sold off more than 6% from its mid-July high, although two-thirds of the stocks in the index are down 10% or more, with one-third down more than 20%. “This sets up for interesting intermediate to long-term stock selection opportunities,” Chronert said.Related: Preorders for the iPhone 15 have begun, and here’s a sign they’ve been ‘solid’
The analyst acknowledged that there is still a risk of economic softening ahead, if not a recession. “Yet, the argument that Growth stocks can show fundamental resilience during periods of broader economic weakening is a theme that we have considered for several years now,” he said.
Set against this backdrop, the analyst firm has compiled a tech-heavy list of 20 stocks that have a buy rating from Citi, have at least 75% of market cap assigned to growth, according to Russell, and have experienced a decline of 10% or more from year-to-date highs since March 31. Other common characteristics of the stocks include consensus estimates of free cash flow per share above March 31 levels and free cash flow per share within or above market-implied five-year-forward estimates.
Tech heavyweights Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+0.74%
and NVIDIA Corp.
NVDA,
+1.47%
are on the list, along with Pinterest Inc.
PINS,
-2.47% ,
Lam Research Corp.
LRCX,
+0.24% ,
Teradata Corp.
TDC,
+0.36% ,
Datadog Inc.
DDOG,
+0.09% ,
MongoDB Inc.
MDB,
-0.73% ,
HubSpot Inc.
HUBS,
+0.18%
and KLA Corp.
KLAC,
+0.79% .
The other stocks cited by Citi are Lockheed Martin Corp.
LMT,
-0.18% ,
DraftKings Inc.
DKNG,
-1.44% ,
Las Vegas Sands Corp.
LVS,
-0.98% ,
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.
CMG,
-0.85% ,
Netflix Inc.
NFLX,
+1.31% ,
TKO Group Holdings Inc.
TKO,
-1.93% ,
Rockwell Automation Inc.
ROK,
+1.09%
and Paycom Software Inc.
PAYC,
+0.45% ,
and healthcare stocks Bruker Corp.
BRKR,
+1.04% ,
Insulet Corp.
PODD,
-0.66%
and Intuitive Surgical Inc.
ISRG,
+1.75% .Related: Will Nvidia stock be like Apple or Cisco in the AI era?
Shares of Apple, which recently launched its iPhone 15, are down 5.5% in the last three months. Shares of chip maker NVIDIA are up 2.8% over the same period, while Lockheed Martin is down 8.9% and DraftKings is up 8.6%. Las Vegas Sands is down 21.8% and Chipotle is down 8.8%, while Netflix is down 7.8%.
[ad_2]
-
Five American captives have flown out of Iran, U.S. officials say
[ad_1]
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Five prisoners sought by the U.S. in a swap with Iran flew out of Tehran on Monday, officials said.
Flight-tracking data analyzed by the AP showed a Qatar Airways flight take off at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport, which has been used for exchanges in the past. Iranian state media soon after said the flight had left Tehran.
Two people, including a senior Biden administration official, said that the prisoners had left Tehran. They both spoke on condition of anonymity because the exchange was ongoing.
Context: Iran and U.S. set to exchange prisoners as $6 billion in once-frozen Iranian assets reaches Qatar
In addition to the five freed Americans, two U.S. family members flew out, according to the Biden administration official. of Tehran.
“ The cash represents money South Korea owed Iran — but had not yet paid — for oil shipments. U.S. House Democrat Jason Crow said Monday that the Biden administration’s recent negotiations led to a situation in which those funds have more, rather than fewer, strings attached. ”
Earlier, officials said that the exchange would take place after nearly $6 billion in once-frozen Iranian assets reached Qatar, a key element of the planned swap.
Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat, observed early Monday on MSNBC that the funds were available to Iran, and that South Korea could unilaterally have transferred them to Tehran, under terms of an arrangement struck by the Trump administration. The Biden administration’s recent negotiations led to a situation, he said, in which those funds have more, rather than fewer, strings attached.
The U.S. Treasury holds the power to reject any requested fund transfers to Iran, U.S. officials have said, even as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi claimed last week in an NBC interview that he was free under the deal’s terms to define the term humanitarian as he chose.
Observers, seeking to reconcile those positions, noted that Raisi likely had a domestic audience in mind and was expressing a view that he knew did not comport with reality.
Despite the exchange, tensions are almost certain to remain high between the U.S. and Iran, which are locked in various disputes, including over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Iran says the program is peaceful, but it now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani was the first to acknowledge the swap would take place Monday. He said the cash sought for the exchange that had been held by South Korea was now in Qatar.
Kanaani made his comments during a news conference aired on state television, but the feed cut immediately after his remarks.
“Fortunately Iran’s frozen assets in South Korea were released and God willing today the assets will start to be fully controlled by the government and the nation,” Kanaani said.
“On the subject of the prisoner swap, it will happen today and five prisoners, citizens of the Islamic Republic, will be released from the prisons in the U.S.,” he added. “Five imprisoned citizens who were in Iran will be given to the U.S. side.”
He said two of the Iranian prisoners will stay in the U.S.
Mohammad Reza Farzin, Iran’s Central Bank chief, later came on state television to acknowledge the receipt of over 5.5 billion euros — $5.9 billion — in accounts in Qatar. Months ago, Iran had anticipated getting as much as $7 billion.
The planned exchange comes ahead of the convening of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly this week in New York, where Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi will speak.
A Qatar Airways plane landed Monday morning at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran, according to flight-tracking data analyzed by the AP. Qatar Airways uses Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport for its commercial flights, but previous prisoner releases have taken place at Mehrabad.
The announcement by Kanaani comes weeks after Iran said that five Iranian-Americans had been transferred from prison to house arrest as part of a confidence-building move. Meanwhile, Seoul allowed the frozen assets, held in South Korean won, to be converted into euros.
The planned swap has unfolded amid a major American military buildup in the Persian Gulf, with the possibility of U.S. troops boarding and guarding commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of all oil shipments pass.
The deal has also already opened U.S. President Joe Biden to fresh criticism from Republicans and others who say that the administration is helping boost the Iranian economy at a time when Iran poses a growing threat to American troops and Mideast allies. That could have implications in his reelection campaign as well.
On the U.S. side, Washington has said the planned swap includes Siamak Namazi, who was detained in 2015 and was later sentenced to 10 years in prison on spying charges; Emad Sharghi, a venture capitalist sentenced to 10 years; and Morad Tahbaz, a British-American conservationist of Iranian descent who was arrested in 2018 and also received a 10-year sentence. All of their charges have been widely criticized by their families, activists and the U.S. government.
U.S. official have so far declined to identify the fourth and fifth prisoner.
The five prisoners Iran has said it seeks are mostly held over allegedly trying to export banned material to Iran, such as dual use electronics that can be used by a military.
The cash represents money South Korea owed Iran — but had not yet paid — for oil purchased before the U.S. imposed sanctions on such transactions in 2019.
The U.S. maintains that, once in Qatar, the money will be held in restricted accounts and will only be able to be used for humanitarian goods, such as medicine and food. Those transactions are currently allowed under American sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic over its advancing nuclear program.
Iranian government officials have largely concurred with that explanation, though some hard-liners have insisted, without providing evidence, that there would be no restrictions on how Tehran spends the money.
Iran and the U.S. have a history of prisoner swaps dating back to the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover and hostage crisis following the Islamic Revolution. Their most recent major exchange happened in 2016, when Iran came to a deal with world powers to restrict its nuclear program in return for an easing of sanctions.
Four American captives, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, flew home from Iran at the time, and several Iranians in the U.S. won their freedom. That same day, then-President Barack Obama’s administration airlifted $400 million in cash to Tehran.
The West accuses Iran of using foreign prisoners — including those with dual nationality — as bargaining chips, an allegation Tehran rejects.
Negotiations over a major prisoner swap faltered after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear deal in 2018. From the following year on, a series of attacks and ship seizures attributed to Iran have raised tensions.
Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear program now enriches closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. While the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has warned that Iran now has enough enriched uranium to produce “several” bombs, months more would likely be needed to build a weapon and potentially miniaturize it to put it on a missile — if Iran decided to pursue one.
Iran maintains its nuclear program is peaceful, and the U.S. intelligence community has kept its assessment that Iran is not pursuing an atomic bomb.
Iran has taken steps in recent months to settle some issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But the advances in its program have led to fears of a wider regional conflagration as Israel, itself a nuclear power, has said it would not allow Tehran to develop the bomb. Israel bombed both Iraq and Syria to stop their nuclear programs, giving the threat more weight. It also is suspected in carrying out a series of killings targeting Iran’s nuclear scientists.
Iran also supplies Russia with the bomb-carrying drones Moscow uses to target sites in Ukraine in its war on Kyiv, which remains another major dispute between Tehran and Washington.
MarketWatch contributed.
[ad_2]
-
UAW strike: Ford, GM, Stellantis record profits haven’t been shared fairly with workers, Biden says
[ad_1]
President Joe Biden on Friday offered his support to the United Auto Workers, as he addressed their strike aimed at the Big Three auto makers.
Auto companies have seen record profits because of the “extraordinary skill and sacrifices” of UAW workers, Biden said in a brief speech at the White House.
“Those record profits have not been shared fairly, in my view, with those workers,” the president added.
“The companies have made some significant offers, but I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW,” he also said.
Biden gave his remarks after about 12,700 workers went on strike early Friday as their union and the Big Three automakers failed to reach an agreement before a contract expired.
It’s a targeted strike at a Ford Motor
F,
-0.08%
plant in Michigan, a General Motors
GM,
+0.86%
plant in Missouri and a Stellantis NV
STLA,
+2.18%
plant in Ohio.The UAW so far has not endorsed Biden’s re-election bid, even as the AFL-CIO and other big unions have lined up behind the Democratic incumbent.
The presidential race in 2024 could be a rematch of 2020’s contest between Biden and former President Donald Trump, who has won over some union households that historically have backed Democrats like Biden rather than Republicans.
See: Here are the Republicans running for president
Biden got more support than Trump from union households in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin in 2020, but Trump got more support from such households in Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to Edison Research exit polls.
Trump has seized on concerns that the car industry’s shift toward electric vehicles
CARZ,
which the Biden administration has promoted, could hurt American workers. “The all Electric Car is a disaster for both the United Auto Workers and the American Consumer,” the former president said Friday in a post on his Truth Social platform.On Friday, Biden said he hopes the UAW and car companies “can return to the negotiation table to forge a win-win agreement,” and he said he’s sending two administration officials to Detroit — Julie Su, the acting secretary of labor, and Gene Sperling, a senior adviser.
GM posted a 2022 net profit of $11.04 billion, up from $10.38 billion in 2021, while Ford recorded a 2022 net profit of $7.62 billion, up from $6.43 billion in the prior year. For Stellantis, the parent company for brands such as Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep, last year’s net profit was $17.83 billion, up from $15.12 billion.
UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement after Biden’s speech that union members “agree with Joe Biden when he says ‘record profits mean record contracts.’”
Fain also said: “Working people are not afraid. You know who’s afraid? The corporate media is afraid. The White House is afraid. The companies are afraid.”
Now read: Tesla may be the winner of the Big Three labor woes
And see: Will the UAW strike push up car prices?
Plus: UAW strike to have limited impact on Big Three, Fitch says
Claudia Assis contributed.
[ad_2]
-
TikTok hit with €345M fine for violating children’s privacy
[ad_1]
Press play to listen to this article
Voiced by artificial intelligence.
Booming social media application TikTok needs to pay up in Europe for violating children’s privacy.
The popular Chinese-owned app failed to protect children’s personal information by making their accounts publicly accessible by default and insufficiently tackled risks that under-13 users could access its platform, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said in a decision published Friday.
The regulator slapped TikTok with a €345 million fine for breaching the EU’s landmark privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The penalty comes amid high tensions between the European Union and China, following the EU’s announcement that it plans to probe Chinese state subsidies of electric cars. European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová is also set to visit China next Monday-Tuesday and meet Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing to discuss the two sides’ technology policies, amid growing concerns over Beijing’s data gathering and cyber espionage practices.
“Alone the fine of [€345 million] is a headline sanction to impose but reflects the extent to which the DPC identified child users were exposed to risk in particular arising from TikTok’s decision at the time to default child user accounts to public settings on registration,” said Helen Dixon, the Irish data protection commissioner, in a written statement.
The Irish privacy regulator said that, in the period from July to December 2020, TikTok had unlawfully made accounts of users aged 13 to 17 public by default, effectively making it possible for anyone to watch and comment on videos they posted. The company also did not appropriately assess the risks that users under the age of 13 could gain access to its platform. It also found that TikTok is still pushing teenagers joining the platform to make their accounts and videos public through manipulative pop-ups. The regulator ordered the firm to change these misleading designs, known as dark patterns, within the next three months.
Minors’ accounts could be paired up with unverified adult accounts during the second half of 2020. The authority said the video platform had also previously failed to explain to teenagers the consequences of making their content and accounts public.
“We respectfully disagree with the decision, particularly the level of the fine imposed,” said Morgan Evans, a TikTok spokesperson. “The [Data Protection Commission]’s criticisms are focused on features and settings that were in place three years ago, and that we made changes to well before the investigation even began, such as setting all under-16 accounts to private by default.”
TikTok added it will comply with the order to change misleading designs by extending such default-privacy settings to accounts of new users aged 16 and 17 later in September. It will also roll out in the next three months changes to the pop-up young users get when they first post a video.
The decision marks the largest-ever privacy fine for TikTok, which is now actively used by 134 million Europeans monthly, and the fifth-largest fine imposed on any tech company under the GDPR.
The platform popular among teenagers has previously faced criticism for insufficiently mitigating harms it poses to its young users, including deadly viral challenges and its addictive algorithm. TikTok — like 18 other online platforms — also now has to limit risks like cyberbullying or face steep fines under the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The costly fine adds to TikTok’s woes in Europe, after it saw a wave of new restrictions on its use earlier this year due to concerns about its connection to China.
The social media app, whose parent company ByteDance is based in Beijing, has struggled to quash concerns over its data security. The company said this month it had started moving its European data to a center within the bloc. Yet, it is still under investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission over the potentially unlawful transfer of European users’ data to China.
The social media app, whose parent company ByteDance is based in Beijing, has struggled to quash concerns over its data security | Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images The Irish data authority in 2021 started probing whether TikTok was respecting children’s privacy requirements. TikTok set up its legal EU headquarters in Dublin in late 2020, meaning the Irish privacy watchdog has been the company’s supervisor for the whole bloc under the GDPR.
Other national watchdogs weighed in on the investigation over the summer via the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), after two German privacy agencies and Italy’s regulator disagreed with Ireland’s initial findings. The group instructed Ireland to sanction TikTok for nudging its users toward public accounts in its misleading pop-ups.
The board of European regulators also had “serious doubts” that TikTok’s measures to keep under-13 users off its platform were effective in the second half of 2020. The EDPB said the mechanisms “could be easily circumvented” and that TikTok was not checking ages “in a sufficiently systematic manner” for existing users. The group said, however, that it couldn’t find an infringement because of a lack of information available during their cooperation process.
The United Kingdom’s data regulator in April fined TikTok £12.7 million (€14.8 million) for letting children under 13 on its platform and using their data. The company also received a €750,000 fine in 2021 from the Dutch privacy authority for failing to protect Dutch children by not having a privacy policy in their native language.
This article has been updated.
[ad_2]
Clothilde Goujard
Source link -
Shipping giant Maersk unveils ‘trendsetter’ green vessel as it aims to be carbon neutral by 2040
[ad_1]
A.P. Moller-Maersk, is one of the world’s biggest container shippers with a market share of around 17%, and is widely seen as a barometer of global trade.
Andia | UIG via Getty Images
Copenhagen, DENMARK — Shipping giant Maersk on Thursday presented its first container vessel moved with green methanol, a landmark moment for one of the world’s most polluting industries.
The new container ship, ordered in 2021, has two engines: one moved by traditional fuels and another run with green methanol — an alternative component, which uses biomass or captured carbon and hydrogen from renewable power. Practically speaking, the new vessel emits 100 tons of carbon dioxide less per day compared to diesel-based ships.
“It’s a really symbolic day of our energy transition, really becoming a reality, something concrete that we can actually demonstrate, not just commitments and hard work, but actually something that everybody can see,” Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc told CNBC.
This is “the first step for us. But it’s the first step for the industry as well. The ship was ordered only in 2021, and she was really the first of its kind. Today, just a couple of years later, we have 125 ships that have been ordered by different companies to actually work on the same technology and the same energy transition. So this ship is really a trendsetter for a whole industry,” Clerc said.
Evergreen and other shipping firms have ordered similar vessels, though they have less ambitious carbon neutrality targets than Maersk.
Shipping accounts for around 3% of global carbon emissions, an amount comparable to major polluting countries. However, decarbonizing the sector has been challenging.
Denmark’s Minister of Industry Morten Bodskov said this is because it is a global industry.
Around 90% of the traded goods in the world are carried via ocean shipping, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
“And if you want to make a global agreement, you have to have, I mean, more or less all countries behind the agreement, and then it is a industry in a highly competitive market. That has also been a key factor,” Bodskov told CNBC.
A so-called shipping tax is a good example of the challenging global conversations on how to accelerate decarbonization efforts.
In June, a group of 20 nations supported a plan for a levy on shipping industry emissions. But China, Argentina and Brazil were among the nations pushing back against such an idea.
Speaking to CNBC, Maersk’s chief said his firm is supportive of such a tax.
“We’ve long advocated the implementation of a carbon tax to really level the playing field and provide the right economic incentives for companies to really lean into the green transition,” he said.
“I’m worried about the rhetoric that energy transition is a downside and not really a great opportunity,” he added.
Supply concerns
This vessel is the first of a wider order of 25 that are due to arrive in 2024. Maersk is looking to become climate neutral by 2040, so these new vessels will be an important part of meeting that deadline and updating its fleet of about 700 ships.
However, analysts are worried that Maersk and its competitors might struggle to find enough supply of green methanol. The fuel is scarce and costly to transport.
“When I look at the market for these green fuels, methanol is definitely one of the most advanced products out there at the moment. But what I can hear from the industry and from market participants is that the wrap up of methanol, green methanol, it hasn’t ramped up very fast,” Ulrik Bak, research analyst at SEB, told CNBC on Wednesday.
“There will be a significant time where I believe that we will have more methanol vessels, then there will be green methanol to [supply] those vessels,” he said.
Maersk has signed at least nine agreements with suppliers of green methanol from all over the world in an attempt to push these firms to produce more of the commodity.
“This has been actually the main, the main headache for a while,” Clerc said.
“And it continues to be as we need to scale this up … It continues to be one of the key focus areas that we need to have today,” he said, adding “we are more confident today than we were a year ago (regarding securing supply)”.
[ad_2]
-
C3.ai, GameStop, UiPath, ChargePoint, Yext, BlackBerry, and More Stock Market Movers
[ad_1]
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/stock-market-movers-3fac9192
-
Order Reprints
-
Print Article
[ad_2]
-
Order Reprints
-
UPS workers vote to approve ‘historic’ five-year contract
[ad_1]
UPS employees approved a new five-year union contract with the delivery giant Tuesday, about a month after reaching a tentative deal that averted a strike of 340,000 United Parcel Services workers.
The Teamsters said 86.3% of members voted for the “historic” deal, saying it was “the highest vote for a contract in the history of the Teamsters at UPS.”
UPS,
-0.97% “Teamsters have set a new standard and raised the bar for pay, benefits and working conditions in the package-delivery industry,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement. “This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon
AMZN,
-0.32%
better pay attention.”Among the parts of the contract the union highlighted were $2.75-an-hour raises for existing full- and part-time union members this year, and a total of a $7.50-an-hour raise over five years. All existing part-timers will earn at least $21 an hour starting immediately per the contract, according to the Teamsters.
The union also noted that the pay increases for full-timers will keep UPS Teamsters as the highest-paid delivery drivers in the country, with the average top rate rising to $49 an hour. In addition, the Teamsters said the new contract ends what it called the two-tier wage system at the company, with all UPS Teamster drivers currently classified as “22.4s” — or hybrid drivers and warehouse workers who were paid less than full-time drivers — to be reclassified immediately as RPCDs, or regular package car drivers.
A UPS spokesperson sent the following statement from the company: “Our Teamsters-represented employees have voted to overwhelmingly ratify a new five-year National Master Agreement that covers more than 300,000 full- and part-time UPS employees in the U.S.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One local supplemental agreement that affects 174 workers in Florida will be renegotiated, the union said. The national master agreement will go into effect as soon as that supplement, which is one of 44 local supplements, has been renegotiated and ratified, the union said.
See: UPS blames ‘late and loud’ Teamsters talks for revenue miss, outlook cut
Also: Actors, writers, hotel housekeepers and grad-student workers are all striking for the same reason
[ad_2]
-
Major shipping routes are struggling with water shortages. El Niño could make it worse
[ad_1]
A ship navigates the Panama Canal in the area of the Americas’ Bridge in Panama City on June 12, 2023.
Luis Acosta | Afp | Getty Images
An increasing number of climate-driven extreme weather events is taking its toll on the world’s major shipping routes — and El Niño could make matters worse.
El Niño — or “the little boy” in Spanish — marks the unusual warming of the surface waters in the tropical central and eastern Pacific Ocean. It is a naturally occurring climate pattern which takes place on average every two to seven years.
The effects of El Niño tend to peak during December, but its full impact typically takes time to spread across the globe. This lag is why forecasters believe 2024 could be the first year when humanity surpasses the key climate threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Global average temperatures in 2022 were 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer when compared with the late 19th century.
In drought-stricken Panama, low water levels have prompted the Central American country to reduce the number of vessels that pass through the critically important Panama Canal.
The restrictions have created a logjam of ships waiting to traverse the route, which many companies favor, as it typically slashes the travel time between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The Panama Canal Authority, which manages the waterway, said earlier this month that the measures were necessary because of “unprecedented challenges.” It added that the severity of this year’s drought had “no historical precedence.”
The Panama Canal pileup comes shortly after the U.N. weather agency declared the onset of El Niño, which is likely to pave the way for a spike in global temperatures and extreme weather conditions.
What we see right now is perhaps only the starter of the main course that is being served next year.
Peter Sands
Chief analyst at Xeneta
Peter Sands, chief analyst at air and ocean freight rate benchmarking platform Xeneta, said maritime chokepoints exist “all over the place,” but that typically only calamitous events such as the 2021 Suez Canal obstruction tend to expose the fragility of the “just-in-time” delivery model.
“I think global shipping is like the world’s largest invisible sector,” Sands told CNBC via videoconference. “We all rely on services and the goods carried by sea, but we hardly ever get to think about how they end up on the shelves — unless something goes wrong.”
The Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, ran aground for almost a week in March 2021 while contending with strong winds. The obstruction halted all traffic on one of the world’s busiest trade routes, causing massive disruption between Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Analysts have since warned that extreme weather driven by the climate crisis could increase the frequency of Ever Given-like events, with potentially far-reaching consequences for supply chains, food security and regional economies.
Vessels waiting to cross Panama Canal from Pacific Ocean side. Red square indicates Panama Canal
‘Planet Labs PBC’
Addressing the unusually long delays at the Panama Canal, Sands said that, while officials have previously imposed restrictions on ships due to low water levels, the onset of El Niño could exacerbate the problem.
“What we see right now is perhaps only the starter of the main course that is being served next year because it could be [a] more severe drought when we get to the first half of 2024,” Sands said, citing the impact of El Niño.
“Right now, we do not see that filling up of the water levels that a normal year would bring around. So, it is literally a potential disaster in the making,” he added.
Falling water levels
Danish shipping giant Maersk said it had been “largely unaffected” by the Panama Canal delays, although it warned that climate risks to major shipping routes were becoming more prevalent with potentially severe impacts.
“We have actually had to deal with some of this back from the 1990s,” Lars Ostergaard Nielsen, head of the Americas liner operations center at Maersk, told CNBC via videoconference.
“I think the difference is that it is perhaps becoming more prevalent, it is more perhaps severe, if you like, in terms of the impact today.”
A crane loads a shipping container branded A.P. Moller-Maersk onto a freight ship.
Balint Porneczi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Referring to low water levels and the restrictions in place on the Panama Canal, Nielsen said the drought is prompting Maersk to load approximately 2,000 containers fewer than usual on the same vessel.
Typically, Nielsen said container ships might need to comply with a maximum depth of 50 feet on the Panama Canal. Current restrictions require ships to adhere to 44 feet of draft, forcing container ships to either weigh less or transport fewer goods.
“Six feet of water, that makes a big difference,” Nielsen said.
While the Panama Canal is likely to be one of the shipping routes most exposed to climate vulnerabilities, it is not the only waterway struggling to cope with the effects of extreme weather.
Low water levels on the Rhine River, an important trade route that runs through Germany via European cities to the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, is also of concern.
Ships sail across the Rhine at Bacharach in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
In late July, water levels at Kaub, Germany — a measuring station west of Frankfurt and a key chokepoint for waterborne freight — dropped to their lowest on a year-to-date basis.
Falling water levels on Europe’s busiest waterway have become a regular occurrence in recent years, making it more difficult for vessels to transit at capacity and increasing shipping costs.
“On the Rhine … it’s basically more daily tactical decisions simply because it’s short trips [and] it’s relatively easy to find alternatives so you can actually deal with that quite late in your processes,” Nielsen said.
“Whereas [with the] Panama Canal, you really have to plan it quite early because by the time you have a crossed the Pacific etc., you don’t really have any other options once you arrive,” he added.
Climate risks
Global insurance broker Marsh warned in a report published late last year that greater focus should be given to understanding the vulnerabilities of maritime chokepoints, given the increasing incidence of climate-driven disruptive weather events.
In the case of the Suez Canal, Marsh cited coastal inundation — where the sea level rises high enough to flood infrastructure — and the increasing chance of extreme heat as physical risks that will only be aggravated by the climate emergency.
If any of the five major waterways worldwide were disrupted by accidents or political events, analysts at Marsh said the impacts will be felt far beyond global supply chains. The broker recognized these five major waterways as the Suez and Panama canals, the Strait of Malacca between Indonesia and Malaysia, the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman, and the Bab-el-Mandeb between Djibouti and Yemen.
[ad_2]
-
Amazon relaunches a delivery service it put on hold during the pandemic
[ad_1]
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
-0.57%
has relaunched its Amazon Shipping delivery service after a pandemic-era pause, the company confirmed on Friday. The news, reported on earlier in the day by the Wall Street Journal, marks the return of a segment of the online retailer that went head-to-head with the likes of FedEx Corp.
FDX,
-0.85%
and United Parcel Service Inc.
UPS,
+0.29%
The service, which processes packages sold via Amazon and other outlets, is now running in most of the U.S., the Journal said. The shipping segment was put on halt after being overwhelmed by the boom in online demand during the pandemic, the Journal said. “We’re always working to develop new, innovative ways to support Amazon’s selling partners, and Amazon Shipping is another option for shipping packages to customers quickly and cost-effectively,” Amazon spokesperson Olivia Connors said in a statement. “We’ve been providing this service for a while with positive feedback so we’re now making it available to more selling partners.” Shares of Amazon were 0.1% lower after hours on Friday.[ad_2]
-
Moscow attacks Ukraine port day before Russia-Turkey talks on grain deal
[ad_1]
Moscow launched a barrage of drone attacks early Sunday at a port in Ukraine’s Odesa region used by Kyiv to export grain, a day ahead of talks between Russia and Turkey where reviving a U.N.-backed grain deal will be high on the agenda.
Kyiv’s air defenses shot down 22 out of the 25 Iranian-made drones destined for the Danube River port infrastructure, Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram on Sunday. At least two people were reported injured.
The Danube River has become Ukraine’s main route for shipping grain after a deal brokered by Turkey and the U.N. allowing Kyiv to use the Black Sea for exports collapsed in July. Moscow has stepped up its attacks of Danube port infrastructure in recent weeks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Russia on Monday, where Turkey is expected to push for the restoration of the Black Sea grain deal.
“Russian terrorists continue to attack port infrastructure in the hope of provoking a food crisis and famine in the world,” said Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, on Telegram following the Russian attack.
Ukrainian officials also said Russian shelling had injured four people in the country’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region Sunday morning, while one person had died after attacks on Saturday in the country’s northeastern Sumy region. POLITICO couldn’t independently verify the reports.
That also comes after a top Ukrainian general leading the country’s counteroffensive said on Saturday that Kyiv’s troops had breached Russia’s first defensive line near Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine after weeks of mine clearance.
In a sign that Russia is also increasingly looking at all possible options to shore up its forces, Moscow has been appealing for fresh recruits through advertizing in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday. Online adverts offering up to €4,756 in initial salaries have been spotted Armenia and Kazakshtan, as well as schemes offering fast-track Russian citizenship for those who sign up.
Around 280,000 people have signed up for military service in Russia so far this year, the country’s former President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday. Last year, Russia announced a plan of increasing its troops by 30 percent to 1.5 million.
[ad_2]
Victor Jack
Source link -
‘This is going to get worse before it gets better’: Panama Canal pileup due to drought reaches 154 vessels
[ad_1]
A ship navigates through the Panama Canal in the area near the Americas’ Bridge in Panama City on April 24, 2023. The scarcity of rainfall due has forced the Panama Canal to reduce the draft of ships passing through the interoceanic waterway, in the midst of a water supply crisis that threatens the future of this maritime route.
Luis Acosta | Afp | Getty Images
The number of vessels waiting to cross the Panama Canal has reached 154, and slots for carriers to book passage are being reduced in an effort to manage congestion caused by ongoing drought conditions that have roiled the major shipping gateway since the spring. The current wait time to cross the canal is now around 21 days.
The Panama Canal is a critical trade link for U.S. shippers heading to Gulf and East Coast ports. The U.S. is the largest user of the Panama Canal, with total U.S. commodity export and import containers representing about 73% of Panama Canal traffic. Forty percent of all U.S. container traffic travels through the canal every year, about $270 billion in cargo.
The massive pileup is a result of water conservation measures the Panama Canal Authority deployed in late July due to drought. The PCA has temporarily lowered the availability of booking slots from August 8-August 21 for Panamax vessels, which are the largest vessels that can cross the canal. These vessels can carry 4,500 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), which are the dimensions of a container. The number of pre-booking slots was reduced to 14 daily from 23.
Satellite photos from Planet Labs detail the congestion.
Vessels waiting to cross Panama Canal from Pacific Ocean side. Red square indicates Panama Canal
‘Planet Labs PBC’
This latest reduction in bookings is on the heels of the PCA reducing the number of vessels allowed to go through the canal in a day. Starting on July 30, 2023, the daily transit capacity of the Panama Canal was adjusted to an average of 32 vessels per day (10 vessels in the newer Neopanamax locks, which serve the larger vessels, and 22 vessels in the older Panamax locks). Before the water conservation measures, transits were 34 to 36 a day.
When the daily capacity is reduced, ships lacking reservations are compelled to wait in line. The Panama Canal Authority tells CNBC 38% of ships waiting have reservations. The remaining 62% of ships do not, which means they have to wait for the vessels with reservations to proceed across the canal.
A temporary measure was put in place where five ships a day on the Panamax locks can traverse the canal on a first come first served basis. The measure is designed to help reduce waiting times but backlog remains.
The PCA told CNBC that the last time a backlog of vessels like the current situation was in 2022, when the world of shipping was impacted by residual delays from the pandemic and the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
Additional lower water level restrictions imposed by the PCA in July also require vessels to be 40% lighter, impacting vessels that were in transit when the requirements were implemented. The Ever Max was forced to unload 1,400 TEUs at the Port of Balboa in order to meet the requirements and gain passage. The vessel is currently anchored at the Port of Savannah.
“Those containers left may need another vessel to complete the journey,” said Captain Adil Ashiq, head of North America for MarineTraffic. “This is going to get worse before it gets better,” he said.
A canal lock uses 50 million gallons of water when a single vessel traverses the canal. Water levels in Gatun Lake, which feeds the canal, are at a four-year low.
Ricaurte Vásquez Morales, administrator of the Panama Canal, said that considering the changing circumstances, the canal is maintaining an open line of communication to keep customers informed about booking slot availability. “Through regular updates, transparent dialogue, and close collaboration with shipping lines and stakeholders, we strive to manage expectations and provide real-time information that enables our customers to make informed decisions,” he said.
Ashiq explained that vessels have to wait longer to transit the canal or ocean carriers make a business decision to take alternative routes, which add time and fuel costs to the journey. Shippers using multiple vessels to move their freight adds to freight costs, and longer lead times to secure bookings. Ultimately, he said, these costs may end up being passed down to businesses and consumers.
Recent data released by supply chain intelligence firm Descartes shows the East Coast ports continue to be the preference for U.S. shippers. The top five West Coast ports showed a decrease of 4.1% in July, and the top East and Gulf Coast ports processed an increase of 4.1% during the same timeframe.
“Now is not the time to further stress supply chains that are still straining under ongoing logistical pressures,” said Stephen Lamar, president and CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association. He said surcharges and vessel restrictions will likely mean higher clothing and shoe prices for U.S. consumers this holiday season.
Alan Baer, CEO of logistics company OL USA, told CNBC that shippers may have to start looking at other routes.
“With the increasing difficulty of reaching the U.S. East Coast via the Panama Canal, importers may be looking at vessels transiting the Suez,” Baer said. He added that this can be an effective solution for freight originating in the ASEAN region and some Southern China origins. However, for Northern China and North Asia, deviation via the Suez can add seven to 14 days of additional transit time.
Energy sector diversions are already happening
Diversions are already happening in the energy sector. The mounting delays have clean tankers, which carry refined petroleum products, avoiding the canal, shifting their preference to book routes to the Atlantic Basin, according to S&P Global. Data from its Commodities at Sea unit shows that in the combined June to July period, U.S. Gulf Coast clean petroleum product exports using the canal and traveling to the West Coast of South America slowed by 82% year over year. Exports in July, specifically, were down 12% year over year.
Cheniere Energy announced in July that it would avoid the Panama Canal to ship LNG because of the wait times. The canal is the quickest route for the LNG market to reach Asia. Coal traffic is also being impacted and making adjustments. India is a big importer of U.S. coal and vessels carrying the commodity also use the Panama Canal.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct volume in traffic for the top five West Coast ports and the top East and Gulf Coast ports during the same time frame.
[ad_2]
-
Ukraine declares war on Russia’s Black Sea shipping
[ad_1]
Press play to listen to this article
Voiced by artificial intelligence.
Russian ports and ships on the Black Sea — including tankers carrying millions of barrels of oil to Europe — could justifiably be attacked by the Ukrainian military as part of efforts to weaken Moscow’s war machine, a senior Kyiv official warned Monday in the wake of two recent attacks on Russian vessels.
“Everything the Russians are moving back and forth on the Black Sea are our valid military targets,” Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told POLITICO, saying the move was retaliation for Russia withdrawing from the U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain deal and unleashing a series of missile attacks on agricultural stores and ports.
“This story started with Russia blocking the grain corridor, threatening to attack our vessels, destroying our ports,” Ustenko said. “Our maritime infrastructure is under constant attack.”
Over the weekend, Ukraine declared the waters around Russia’s Black Sea ports a “war risk area” from August 23 “until further notice.” The zone includes major Russian ports like Novorossiysk, Anapa, Gelendzhik, Tuapse, Sochi and Taman.
That’s causing insurance rates for ships to skyrocket and could imperil one of Russia’s main export routes for oil and oil products — key in ensuring the Kremlin has enough cash to keep waging war against Ukraine.
“This story started with Russia blocking the grain corridor, threatening to attack our vessels, destroying our ports,” Ustenko said | Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images “After this weekend, the Black Sea feels like a more dangerous place for international shipping, and it was already very dangerous,” said Byron McKinney, director with S&P Global Market Intelligence. “Many vessels simply don’t go to the area. Insurance is pretty much nonexistent. Where there are insurance rates they’re very high and that’s only going to increase.”
On Saturday, Russia’s federal maritime agency, Rosmorrechflot, reported that a Russian tanker, the Sig, had been hit in an apparent strike by Ukrainian forces while sailing close to Ukraine’s occupied Crimean peninsula.
“The tanker received a hit on its engine room, close to the waterline on the starboard side, presumably as a result of an attack by a sea drone,” officials said.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said that as long as Russians “terrorize peaceful Ukrainian cities and destroy grain condemning hundreds of millions to starvation,” there would be “no more safe waters or peaceful harbors for you in the Black and Azov Seas.”
Crude crisis
Last month, Russia shipped almost 59 million barrels of crude oil, a third of its overall exports, from the strategic Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, according to intelligence firm Kpler. Of that, 32 million barrels went to EU countries. The port also handles other fuels like diesel, gasoil and naphtha in addition to grain destined for the global market.
Novorossiysk is also where the Caspian Pipeline Consortium oil conduit terminates, bringing up to 1.3 million barrels a day of oil from Kazakhstan — from where it is shipped on to world markets.
Last month, Russia shipped almost 59 million barrels of crude oil | Francois Lo Presti/AFP via Getty Images Novorossiysk is also home to a major naval base of the Black Sea Fleet. Last week, a Ukrainian sea drone hit and damaged a Russian military landing vessel, the Olenegorsky Gornyak.
The proximity of Moscow’s military to trade ports could increase the risk to civilian vessels, warned Alexis Ellender, a commodities analyst with Kpler.
“Those operating on the shipping markets are saying they obviously don’t expect Ukraine to attack commercial shipping, but there’s a risk that installations or ships get caught in the crossfire and there’s a lot of trade that moves through Russia’s Black Sea ports,” he said. “There’s a lot of Greek ships working on these trades and while some owners are reluctant to carry Russian cargo, there’s a whole international mix there.”
Shipping forecast
The growing risk the conflict poses to busy international waterways will mean tough decisions for the shipping industry, and for traders tempted to keep buying cheap Russian oil under the terms of a $60 per barrel price cap set last year by the G7.
“You’ve still got Greek and Turkish tankers operating around that zone though, working with Russian oil within the price cap restrictions, and there were quite a few foreign-owned vessels in and around the vicinity of the drone attack in Novorossiysk,” said McKinney. “The most interesting question to come out of this is whether they will be deterred in the future if their multimillion dollar assets are now at risk from a stray missile or whatever it may be.”
The International Chamber of Shipping, which represents shipowners and operators, declined to comment on whether the latest flareups in the Black Sea would deter its members from doing business there.
But, for Ustenko, Western companies should already be realizing there can be no more business as usual with Russia.
“From a legal and moral perspective, it’s completely unjustifiable for these vessels to continue to deliver Russian oil,” he said. “Now that’s supported from the economic point of view as well since the risk is extremely high. Under these circumstances, the prices of insurance are going to jump significantly, making these deliveries unprofitable. Your vessel and your crew is going to be under huge risk.”
“The big companies selling insurance, doing financing, are they prepared to continue this kind of work when they see these pictures coming from the Black Sea?” Ustenko asked. “This is the right moment for even those still trying to close their eyes and pretend nothing has really happened for them to realize — no way.”
Hanne Cokelaere contributed reporting.
[ad_2]
Gabriel Gavin
Source link
